Still waiting on that 5 sigma.
6 sigma or it didn’t happen babe.
So would this mean that cpus would not generate heat?
Would smartphone battery life skyrocket?
Can someone breakdown how this would affect computing?
So would this mean that cpus would not generate heat?
Not quite. Charges undergoing acceleration and state transitions still generate EM radiation, and still lose energy. In a semiconductor, charges start moving, stop moving, and change direction all the time. So that form of energy loss & heat generation will continue.
In addition, the semiconductor itself is still a semiconductor, not a superconductor. To take advantage of the ability of a semiconductor to hold charges in specific states, there will be some heat losses.
But, a practical superconductor could be used to form all the interconnects in a PC board or the surface of a silicon chip device, providing an efficiency improvement.
According to the article fabrication seems to have a very low yield. That will generally make it difficult for consumer products.
I would generally assume first use would be in locations were super conductors are already used today. E. g. in MRI machines which would then not require cooling anymore and therefore could be more compact, quieter and consuming much less energy.
Other prime fields for super conductors are energy transportation from the energy producers to the consumers.
Application in electronics seems difficult for me as the material is not used stand alone there and therefore new fabrication processes and designs will be needed. After all it will not work to use this material to replace silicon transistors as our transistor designs are relying on the semiconductor nature of silicone and a superconductor cannot follow this by definition. Maybe the connections between transistors can be replaced, but I am not sure where most of the heat generation happens. If I remember my physics studies correctly there is also significant energy loss within the transistor and that would still mean that the cpu would heat up. This would be now especially critical as the temperature must not exceed the temperature where the material loses super conductivity as this would most likely lead to a fast melt down of the device.
Don’t the current quantum computers also rely on superconducting materials that need to be kept sort cold?
My understanding is that they also need low thermal noise to ensure pure states. They cool much below the superconduction threshold temperature (eg typically 20 mK). So I am not sure that this would be useful for quantum computers at the moment. Magnetic field productions such as that in MRI requires high current, so that depends on the maximum current that this material can sustain before that breaks superconductivity. So it could perhaps turn out useful or totally useless. Hard to say at the moment.
“So it could perhaps turn out useful or totally useless.”
That’s a realistic statement. Although the MRI thing sounds cool as well. I recall last year a big grant for a big 14T mRI project was awarded in the Netherlands, I wonder if this thing will make them reevaluate their plans. Before this becomes viable in such a setting I can imagine a lot more is needed, but it would be such a typical thing that they finish building a 14T MRI and then “hey guys we just finished this superconductor pipeline and stuff is much easier/better now!”
Big if true
How big kinda depends…
The two limits on superconductor performance are:
- How much current it can carry
- How much magnetic field it can withstand
It will soon go to National Labs to establish those parameters
From what I understand, even if the current and magnetic field of this superconductor are low, it has:
- Identified a process for creating new superconductive materials
- Proven that ambient temperature and pressure superconductors are possible
This is amazing news
I hope they find a way to scale to production, but given how impactful it could be I’m certain there are a lot of people working like mad to do just that. Currently the only known way to make them is “shake n’ bake” lol.
If this works at all, every material scientist in the world will be working on similar materials and manufacturing processes for them to improve the effect and make them more manufacturable.
I hope so. My fear is after seeing what the fossil fuel industries did to stop alternatives from arising, that they will embark on a new campaign to undermine this for as long as possible.
I think this would be a big enough deal that even they couldn’t stop everyone from trying to use it.
The fossil fuel industry opposing superconductors would be like Blockbuster trying to run a campaign to destroy the Internet to preserve their video rental chain. The rest of the world would tell them to sit down and shut up with their piddling little concerns and trivial economic power. Superconductors will be far more important.
This has the potential to be a huge breakthrough!
